


BE | THE | LIGHT

by Fiathe



Category: B.A.P, K-pop
Genre: Angst, Arguments, M/M, Music, Non-Idol AU, confusing time markers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1914672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiathe/pseuds/Fiathe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It only takes one day for everything you've ever known to shatter</p>
            </blockquote>





	BE | THE | LIGHT

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted on AFF.   
> Based off the Block B song of the same title, but only musically wise. Lyrics, concept etc did not influence this story.

(Where it all starts)

**Noon**

In your bedroom there stands a stained glass window: a pretty little thing, all bright blues and comforting yellows. It was a present from your older brother for your twentieth birthday.  _To celebrate my lil bro finally making it big,_ he had said teasingly, ruffling your head just the way you hated it. They had thought you would never make it as a singer in a household of bankers, but you did, and you did it well.

As an only child, I never understood the love-hate dynamics of siblings, all the push and pull of teasing followed by hugs and kisses. But what I did understand was that through it all they loved you. It was evident in the way every morning when the sun made its customary wake-up call, you would wake up to an ocean of fairy lights. It was beautiful. You were beautiful.

You used to joke that the glass ‘lit up your life’.

For you, light was your stained glass. For me, you were mine.

(-6 hours) 

**6 AM**

Daehyun woke earlier than usual. The birds weren’t even croaking out their daily tune yet, but there he was, sitting on the wooden floor with his back to a plush chair. He clutched a cup of cooling hot chocolate in his hands like a prayer and flipped open the photo album in his lap. He remembered every moment captured in those minute Polaroid frames of black and white and light. Remembered it like a sin and a guilty pleasure.

_Snap-_

Chubby hands clutching little power ranger toys, letting them fly to near collision and pulling away the last heart-pounding second.

 _You get the blue one_ , Youngjae had said.  _Because it matches your shirt!_

 _Mine’s red,_ he had then flashed a dimpled smile that had not been captured in a matrix of chemicals and dye, but instead by Daehyun’s memory, the innocence and childish glee a stain much harder to erase.  _Because I’m the leader!_  he had declared.

_Snap-_

Two boys playing guitars. Or not actually playing because they hadn’t a clue on how to play. But Youngjae had spent hours begging and pleading and promising their next door neighbor that they would treat the instruments like godly artifacts, and their presence was the product of his hard work. So they had sat there strumming and pretending it actually sounded like a song because there was the thrill of producing music from the simple touch of fingers to string. It was magic in the most basal of forms: the act of creation, the ability of producing something from nothing, and the two of them were enthralled by the light of a new discovery.

_Snap-_

Youngjae. Crying.

Tears of happiness.

After two long years his parents had finally relented and allowed him to pursue the path of music. He was book smart the way Daehyun was street smart. His parents had had high hopes for him as a banker, a businessman, a doctor. Anything so long as it wasn’t the slippery slope of being a musician. But at the same time they had realized Youngjae’s passion, his ability, his unwillingness to budge. So they relented. But terms and conditions applied.

 _One year_ , they had said sternly.  _If you don’t make it within one year, we’re pulling you out and you’re going to college._

Youngjae had nodded feverently and crossed fingers over his heart and sworn his soul away, because music was everything.

Daehyun had been the first person he had come to, tears spilling down his cheeks like precious gems. He smothered his face in Dae’s white shirt and mumbled nonsensical words until Daehyun had pulled him back, worried for a second that something had hurt his best friend, but then took one look at Youngjae’s broad grin and realized the obstacle that Youngjae had been fighting against for so long was finally gone. And Youngjae had held Daehyun tight, forehead touching forehead, nose pressing against nose and whispered promise upon promise. That they would scale the music industry, be the best there ever was, and that there would always, always, always be Daehyun and Youngjae or Youngjae and Daehyun.

And nothing would ever make them part.   

 (+ 6 hours)

**6 PM**

The light is fading, the water-color lights slowly being consumed as sunlight falters. It’s the monster under the bed, the devil in the darkness, it’s everything evil conspiring against the existence of you and me.

And yet that stained glass dares to sparkle.

My fist flies out. It connects. Smashes. Crashes.

The shards rain to the floor, somehow slow and shimmering. It’s disconcerting to watch. Everything is unnaturally slow and sluggish. The fall of light, the dull throb of pain in my fist, the splash of blood on my white shirt. None of it matters as I watch, entranced, by the glint of color hurtling in an arc to the ground, each a shade of ugly perfection.

You and I always hated the word  _perfection_. The way its sound sliced against our ears; it was raw as the edge of a metal blade employed by those parrot-minded critiques who could find no phrase better. It was the way it tasted bitter as iron and copper against our lips, the error of us attempting to pacify those men by repeating their words with fake amity.

In the end we both decided to stop using that word. It meant nothing; it gave us nothing. It was a limit, a preformed shackle that chained us grounded against our wills to fly higher. And you and I hated nothing more than the thought of music without wings.

 

(- 4hours)

**8AM**

Daehyun stared from his position on the floor as the front door slammed open.

“Youngjae…” he murmured, eyes scanning the redness of Youngjae’s face, the haggard lines drawn over his cheeks and his shaking hands. It was easy to guess where he had been all night. “We need to-“

“Don’t talk to me,” Youngjae barked and strode into his bedroom lit with light.

 

(+7 hours)

**7PM**

Was it so difficult being with me? Was I not enough?

You and I both loved music. But it was you who was the light, the one who opened all the doors and soared high. It was you who had the talent, the charisma, the ability to breathe life into ink and strings.

I was never the special one.

I was the Robin to Batman, Krypto to Superman, shadow to light.

Sure I could sing. But you could make magic. And in my mind, that was a far greater thing. So I followed you, hand holding hand, all the way up to the top. We scaled it. We aced it. We became everything we wanted to become.

And I never said a word. You were the leader and I was the one who matched your colors.

I never asked for much.

Just one thing.

Just for you to-

**PLEASE.**

**BE.**

####  **THE.**

#  **LIGHT-**

_Please-_

(-2 hours)

**10 AM**

“You promised that it was always going to be you and me. You promised!” Daehyun’s voice was a screech.

“I promised, sure I did,” Youngjae yanked his hand out of Daehyun’s pawing grasp. “I promised a lot of things. So did you Daehyun.” He spat out Daehyun’s name like it was acid and he was burning from inside out. “But I’m taking it back now. All those reporters, those musicians, those producers, they’re a broken record on loop.  _How talented you two are, two years ago and you could have paid me a hundred bucks and I would have never guessed how far you two would climb! So…have you thought about my proposal?_  Why do you want to stick around with that filth?”

“I know you’re tired of them, but you can’t just abandon music!” Daehyun grabbed for Youngjae’s sleeve again.

“Stop it Dae!” Youngjae snapped. “Sure we used sing that tune, but we were kids. Looks like the saying is true, the grass is always greener on the other side. Get there and you find out it’s all rotten and plastic. It’s fake through and through and I’ve had enough!”

 “But…I need you. We’re a duo, a pair. Best friends, comrades in arms.”

Youngjae snorted. “Gods Dae,” He ran one frustrated hand through jet black hair. “We’re best friends, not lovers. I can’t always be there to hold your hand.”

Daehyun stumbled backwards. He tried to hide the shock that knifed across his face, but Youngjae saw it and it made Youngjae’s skin prickle all over. He could have never fathomed the depth of Daehyun’s need for Youngjae.

“I never asked you for that Jae,” Daehyun said slowly, as if he was having trouble forcing the words out. “I only ever asked you of one thing. And that was to be my light.”

Youngjae let out a small huff. “You’ve always called me that, and I’ve never questioned it before, but what do you mean by light?”

“You’re my stained glass. You color my world and make me see how special music is,” Daehyun whispered thickly, solemnly. “You showed me everything we could be, and then we made it happen. You gave music wings. Don’t rip them down now.”

“Dae…” Youngjae sighed and pulled a pair of sunglasses out. He propped them up on the bridge of his nose, still staring down at Daehyun with those soulful black eyes of his. “Sure I said I’d be your light, but the sun doesn’t stay in the sky for 24 hours. I can’t be an unrealistic expectation Dae…”

Youngjae grabbed the handle of his suitcase and threw open the door. Sunlight streamed in and blinded Dae momentarily. “I’m out of here Dae, and you can follow me if you want, but I’m not staying chained any longer. Stand on your own two feet or fall. I leave the choice up to you.”

Youngjae turned and Daehyun was moving even before he realized it, one hand locking around Youngjae’s wrist and tugging him back into the half-shadow casted by the door. Youngjae let out a sound of surprise and turned, eyes flashing, to find Daehyun pressing his lips against his mouth.

Youngjae stilled. It wasn’t so much of a kiss, more perhaps of a touch of lips, Daehyun’s final stand in sending his message to his best friend.

 _Don’t go. Stay right here. Please, my light, my friend. My everything_.

Finally Daehyun pulled back. He opened his eyes slowly, almost reluctantly, as if he didn’t want to see Youngjae’s response.

Youngjae was staring at him, the faintest lines of regret tugging at his lips. One hand came up to touch his lips. He gave Daehyun a sad smile.

“I choose to live Dae,” he whispered and leaned forwards to press his own lips to Daehyun. It was a short kiss, and Youngjae was pulling back faster than Daehyun would have liked it. He gave Daehyun a final smile and then propped up his glasses, blocking his eyes completely.

Youngjae bent down to pick up his fallen suitcase.

“Goodbye best buddy,” he said softly as he opened the door again and stepped into the light.

 

(+12 hours)

Where it ends

**Midnight**

The glass is broken and so is the bond between you and me. It’s lying in shards, a beautiful, lethal bed of the broken and the lost, of the fallen and the sunken. I lie here on the floor, uncaring of the prickle of glass that I lie on, wrapped in your comforter. One of the few things that remain here.

I am staring at the stars doing their best to glitter in a moonless sky. It’s almost pathetic. Their muted light reflect off the pieces of the stained glass scattered on the floor. Once comforting, the light they cast now feels disjointed, a tipsy dancer at a strobe-lit party, lost and confused and more than a little unsure of where or why they are there.

It’s jarring to accept that you are gone. We may have not been lovers or soul mates, but we were something more. And without you I am untether **e** d, a lone figure stumbling on the edge of the cliff _, this_  close to falling into an endless abyss.

…

Tell me Youngjae.  

…

When the lights goes out,

what

is

left

behind

?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
